Thalatta

Maybe this would be useful for you, found it on some Maurya thread, but the link shared has Gupta units: Horse archers are notoriously absent, when they were a characteristic of the Guptas. Here some Gupta coins:

No, I'm not Kate, and this forum is the first I have taken part in like 20 years, if I remember correctly. Everything is math under the hood, but no one ever does it (not even me), one just gets a feeling of what will work when. One doesn't calculate exactly how many seconds a certain amount of units will take to capture some structure, but there's a formula behind it, and one just has some intuitive idea after some time. I was just trying to do that same thing with something a bit similar to what CheckTester said, with some realistic reconsiderations. And then arguing that virtual combat with base garrisons would be more realistic, simple, and help with intuitiveness.

@CheckTester, I'm quite confused about your proposal. Let's imagine the case where a ship with a garrison of 30 boards an ungarrisoned ship. According to what I understand, successful boarding happens in 5 seconds, the captured ship suffers HP loss, and the attacker loses just 2-4 units? Always? What if the defender ship also had a garrison of 30? What does “almost over” mean? What does “soften” mean? That the garrison is vulnerable to ranged attacks? If the defender has more defenders, damage doubles where? On the attacker ship? Where is the fight even happening? It is unclear to me what happens with garrisons depending on which ship sinks. Seems like complicated ship combat where the parameters are the garrisons. I don’t think it’s realistic for ships to take this much damage from boarding, this is mixing a couple of different things: either you ram a ship to sink it, or you ram (shear) the oars, to slow it down for boarding (and hurt the rowers, decreasing the number of defenders). You don’t want to ram a ship, breach its hull, and then board it, because the boarders risk going down with the ship (although this is controversial, some claim they didn't completely sink, and the risk was being boarded themselves). In fact, after breaching, the ramming ship has to move backward, to avoid getting stuck. That’s why ships getting so much damage that sink during boarding would have been quite rare, many measures were taken to avoid such suicide. What did happen is that ramming ships could get damaged (something simple that could actually be added to the game, considering they do a lot of damage anyway), but not really during boarding. I would rework your mechanism like this: if attacker ship has N garrisoned units, defender ship has M garrisoned units, defender base HP is H and present HP X, then final surviving units that get split on both ships are F=N-(M+k)(X/H), where k is a parameter to set, and is how many attackers are killed if the defender ship has no garrison and full HP (just doing the trivial math, F=N-(0+k)(H/H)=N-k => k=N-F, attackers minus final survivors, that is, killed attackers). So k can be any coherent formula, from 2 to 4 as you said (the formula would give more survivors if the defending ship is damaged), or preferably something depending on the number of attackers and with how many the defending crew can handle, C, thus a simple formula could be C(C/N) (with this, crew resistance becomes inefficient when overwhelmed), that is, with C=5, 5 attackers get all killed (5(5/5)=5), and then goes down until from 17 attackers only one gets killed (5(5/17)=1.47), rounding up, and not taking yet into account defending garrison and ship HP, the final formula is of course F=N-(M+C^2/N)(X/H), which as a complete example, N=20 attackers against a ship with 100% HP that can handle C=10 attackers would mean F=15 survivors, that must be split in 2 ships, but if the defending ship is damaged first down to 50%, then there will be 18 survivors, and if the defending ship had a garrison of M=5, then these numbers would have been 10 and 15 survivors, respectively. If M=15 there are 0 survivors. If M=20, F=-5, which could mean 5 survived from the defender’s garrison (one has to be careful with extreme numbers, N=1 gives F=-24, when it should cap at -20, but I made the formula intuitively and fast). Furthermore, if it’s deemed that the defending garrison should have even more advantage, a defense factor D greater than 1 can be added, and if it’s deemed that ship damage should have a greater softening effect, a softening factor S greater than 1 can be added, resulting in F=N-(DM+C^2/N)(X/H)^S. In any case, both this and what you propose (or at least what you said) have a big problem anyway: blindness on how strong units actually are. That’s why I think “virtual combat” is necessary. Now, I think you misunderstand the “base garrison” idea. It does take into account boarding not being no-risk, high-reward. To do ship damage is recommended to reduce it (I’m mixing ramming and shearing because the game doesn’t differentiate them, but it’s not the same as truly mixing them during boarding, that’s why it’s more realistic). It precisely avoids being able to “capture an enemy trireme for free just by having 10 hoplites”, since the hoplites have to fight the base garrison first, and then both their survivors and the attackers base garrison has to be split, greatly preventing snowballing. Garrisons should be vulnerable to ranged fire. If the existing system doesn’t include some form of virtual combat, then nothing reasonable can be done, because having a garrison of 30 workers would be the same as 30 champions. If it’s included, then base garrison is a trivial thing to add, and the same mechanism could be used for capturing buildings. The only worry would be that the AI would need to be taught all this stuff, which is something that has come to my attention a couple of times lately, and it’s indeed not a minor issue.

Yes, I was thinking, people build enough dropsites anyway to get fast access to resources, there's no point adding rules to solve a problem that doesn't really exist. But I think some simple addition to make new territory a bit more relevant is in order, after all, besides making other CCs more city-like, it has been mentioned in the past that there are not many reasons for expansion, that fields around CCs are unsightly and inaccurate, and even that CCs could be specialised. Maybe just adding a gap around the CC where no resources or structures can be located could tackle some things. I’m not sure how to easily make relevant building houses somewhere else though, and one has to be careful with snowballing.

Well, but the number of units will be arbitrary. I think it's ok for people to decide if they want to chase units, or to do it with last CC standing. I thought about an intermediate possibility: if all CCs are taken, units lose HP, unless they are close to a Hero or garrisoned (maybe just on certain buildings).

Well, a resource cap, with dropsites increasing it, is an interesting and not complicated idea, as long as it’s not too disruptive and only penalises under-building dropsites. Loot can be calculated as some fraction of total resources, divided by the amount of dropsites. Something I was thinking is that CCs are given too much importance as dropsites, and this just comes from other RTS, but it’s historically inaccurate (when compared to the other specialised dropsites), and causes fields to end surrounding it. Of course the idea is to have a dropsite at the beginning, but I wonder if, while one progresses, adding some penalty to them, or some bonus to the other dropsites, wouldn’t restructure things to look better, or maybe something else is better, with those consequences in mind. I have other ideas, but are more radical.

Yeah, then I understood, just that you proposed something that happens in basically no RTS (if any?) so casually that I was confused. I'm always happy to propose and discuss changes to the base game, but this, honestly, is not going to make it. It's just too radical. You'll have to try it in some mod.

Regarding your first line, not allowing fields next to CCs was discussed not long ago, I don’t know what was the conclusion. I think it’ll be implemented at least in one mod for now. Regarding your second line... I'm confused about “storage actually contains resources”, RTS don’t tend to work like that… not that that’s an invalid mechanic, just that you are stating it like it’s the obvious default, if I even understand correctly what's going on.

Not that fast to get it from a video, but from its wiki: "As the player advances through the ages, and erects more structures within the city limits, the city will expand, increasing its defensive power, gather rate, and extending the national borders, as well as its own radius". Indeed I had forgotten, this is a really nice mechanic, I prefer it to going village->town->city for all CCs at the same time. What ruined RoN for me was the automatic transport ships after building a dock. I think I've read this being discussed, and indeed it would be worth having the option, no need to impose one or the other. I don't tend to agree with this, because there are many ways in which something can work, and no one resonable proposes "change this without any testing, because it works in my mental emulation".

Can you remind me? This was over 20 years ago for me. I remember one would build cities, and things around them, but I don't remember why this was necessary, and not end like in 0 A.D., having almost everything you need around only one city. In any case, I wonder if something could be done to make it a bit more realistic and force expansion, for example, to have limits for each building type around each CC. Surely this was discussed at some point.

The fact that when selecting only one player the game automatically declares victory seems almost a bug to me. In that situation, victory conditions implying having an enemy in the first place should not be taken into account.

If these 2 things are different, then it's not good. Besides, it's a bit redundant to have the Tutorial twice. I'd remove it from both places and put it on Single Player > Tutorial, to separate what is playable, in Single Player, from what is readable, in Learn To Play, which could be renamed to Information, Resources, Library, Encyclopedia, whatever. Or just Continue Campaign, since it also appears in the Main Menu, from where I suggested to be removed because of redundancy.

I think it's annoying to chase the last house around, same as it's annoying to chase the last unit around. I guess that's why this game has put emphasis on CCs, fortresses and towers as “last bastions” (which I agree it should build in decent numbers and all around), all other buildings should be secondary, once your “government” and main defenses are finished, you should be done. After all, Alexander didn’t chase the last ice house and persian worker around. In any case, I think that when all CCs are taken, all units should slowly lose "allegiance" (unless they are near a Hero, or garrisoned) and become Gaia’s or something, and something similar to buildings to avoid their instantly collapse at the end, which I don’t think looks good. I have a suggestion about all this that I’ll post when I gather another 20 of them.

Towers in general I mean (on the images they appear as part of the wall since that's the most common way to use them), there are reasons for everything mentioned: first they started with the parapet on the roof (you want to put people there also), and when catapults were used, the slits were wider, thus the shutters needed for protection, and the gabled roof to protect the machines from water. Meaning, you used the roof of a tower with catapults on the upper chamber, but the slits there are for archers.

Hey, I don't know how realistic would you like Ancient Greek towers to be, or how many variants could be done, but here I described how they were according to their function: And here a couple of images from the book I mentioned: Basically, if the upper chamber had catapults, the roof was gabled, and the slits wider, with double-leafed outward-opening side-swinging shutters attached to the outside. Otherwise, if it also had archers, then it had an open fighting platform protected by a parapet at roof level, similar to the right tower of the lower picture. Cilindrical versions were harder to build but more resistant.

Extended to wherever it makes sense would save headaches. Regarding tribal confederations, it would be nice if the choice tree corresponds to probable historical alliances, usually driven by geographical proximity or customs, resulting in a less heterogeneous and more specialised confederation.

So, when talking about Germans, the idea seems to be to control a coalition, and one chooses which tribes join it, unlocking different units, buildings, techs, heroes, whatever. I like this, since it would save a lot of headaches regarding what tribes to ignore from them, not to end with lots of civs that look similar (same with Britons and Iberians). I would add that maybe for these factions the “starting tribe” could be selected beforehand (or as a free pop-up choice at the very beginning), not to start with some unspecified tribe. If one in particular is needed for some campaign, this initial selection would be locked, and their name set accordingly (if that’s possible). Regarding the Greeks, it seems a bit more problematic because they are quite fleshed out already (since we know way more details about them), whole leagues would be too heterogeneous. If the problem to solve is that certain scenarios need to consider city-states that are not included in the game, then there could be a generic Greek template for them (I guess the original one is still around). Maybe a bit unrelated but somehow connected on how to prepare certain things for the future: some time ago I’ve read about the “Grand Vision” (adding lots of epochs and factions to the game), which has the issue of how to deal with factions that didn’t exist in certain epochs. Some have mentioned they don’t want to have civilizations separated into eras, others that don’t want Mycenaean Greece vs Byzantine Late Empire. I think a solution is to have a faction epoch graph that would make factions available if they had come into existence by the starting epoch chosen. It doesn’t make sense to start at 400 B.C. with the Seleucids, one would have to choose the Macedonians (or maybe the Persians, that’s why it’s not a tree but a directed acyclic graph), and at the appropriate epoch, given the choice to stay Macedonian or switch to Seleucids or Ptolemies. If Macedonians are chosen, later on there’s the Roman conquest, so one would need to switch to them. If alternative history could be an option, one could choose to stay Macedonian (this doesn’t mean everything goes, Ptolemies in 400 B.C. is not alternative history, but nonsense), but then one would need to make up the characteristics of this faction from a parallel universe. Anyway, although the switch could be done between scenarios, doing it in the middle of a scenario would show that the game can handle these historical changes seamlessly with a gameplay feature. This could be a solution regarding what I mentioned in https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/143241-thoughts-on-the-spartans/?do=findComment&comment=750127 about trying to be historically accurate with techs: "Persians and Seleucids would have almost completely different techs, since one completely preceded the other chronologically".

What you are asking can't be reasonably done. It's not about doing a statistically validated poll, but what one reads (I can read plenty in three months), and perceives when taking up the game (maybe this was too long ago for you and many), after all, this thread started with "several posts that suggest that the current Petra is too difficult". That’s a start for something, and everything else I keep reading here, on Reddit, etc, makes it valid for me, considering the gap between Very Easy and Sandbox has already been mentioned before. And it's not that I don't care that some are having a positive experience, it's that that doesn't indicate there's no problem for some. Regarding pacing, as I've mentioned, it's a fact that production times are much faster than in other games, as discussed in the link I provided from this forum. Regarding speed of the game itself, I see that as less relevant than the other two things, but I do still think all this is mostly cosmetic, since once you choose the Competitive Preset, it just stays there, and one would use that for everything. Why do experienced players care what the default setting was at the beginning, if it's clear what the accepted competitive setting is? There’s no breaking of what already works, it’s all under the corresponding Preset. Actually, besides cosmetics, I also proposed the addition of levels, which was also mentioned by the OP. To summarise, I think the difficulty levels should be (for Aggressive, while for Balanced and Defensive rushes should be tuned down even more) something along these lines (or whatever approximation possible): -Sandbox: as it is now. -Extremely Easy: no rushes, small armies and defenses. -Very Easy: small rushes, medium armies and defenses. -Easy: medium rushes, decent armies and defenses. -Normal: decent rushes, large armies and defenses, comparable to other games, no warning should be needed. -Hard, Very Hard and Extremely Hard: only now large rushes, huge armies and defenses, EH at least as hard as SC2 brutal (or whatever is possible), VH and H more or less equidistantly filling the gap down to Normal. For hard levels, yes, for easy levels, no. It's like all difficulty levels seem clustered somewhere above the usual Normal, but don't reach as far as SC2 Brutal, which is not that brutal considering I'm far from being a pro, yet managed just fine.

In Normal 0 A.D., same, after a couple of lost matches I realised one had to hurry, and since then Very Hard wasn't a problem. When the AI was improved recently, again I lost a couple of matches, and realised I had to play even better, so the following few matches I've won on Very Hard (set always on Aggressive). But it seems some people just can’t do this as easily as we can (I just hold back because I don’t like to confront a game like I’m on cocaine, I just step up as it's necessary). Regarding SC2, I went straight to Brutal, and yes, a couple of Protoss scenarios took me the whole day, but I knew what I was going against, and this is kind of my point, it’s all about expectations, and not only 0 A.D. Normal is not normal (I don’t think one should read a guide and watch some videos for it, and, yet again, there’s a warning in the game itself), but apparently on Very Easy people are getting rushed. This should not happen, there’s a clear gap between that level and Sandbox, and not because the AI is smart, but because it makes rushes, and this is the core of the problem with the easy levels, which might be trivial for you and I, and for many others, but I don’t want to lose sight of those who have some RTS experience and have their expectations on what those difficulty levels should actually mean. Most of the rest of your answer is just dismissing their experience, do negative responses cancel their opinions? Do positive reviews brush off those who are frustrated? Is it not fast-paced for some, even when for others that’s a conditional thing? I don’t care about those who have a positive experience, good for them, that’s a non-issue, I worry about those who seem to be left behind. I got those links in 5 minutes, I could keep going and you know it, so let’s not waste time on ignoring an issue that’s there. I don’t necessarily say it is deliberate, it could well be accidental, which could be because this is a game made mostly by gamers that like the genre so much (this is, being quite experienced in it) that are willing to volunteer to code to make it. There’s a lot of knowledge about gameplay and balance, but this, seems to me, has shifted game too much to their preferences. I feel a “corporate” game tries to take more into account casuals and total beginners, because selling it really matters for them. So, I think there’s tension between what experienced RTS players want, and growing the game, for which I think is vital to consider what casuals and total beginners can actually do without delving into guides and videos, which, unsurprisingly, they are not going to do, they just want to play a game as they have played others. My proposal is just a cosmetic thing, how the game is presented out of the box, given that I think there’s plenty of evidence many are getting frustrated (which, again, doesn’t contradict that many are not, as I know is the case). The 0.8x speed idea is also mostly cosmetic, so I’m not sure why it would be so terrible (and with upgradeable Achievements one would be motivating people to play with Competitive Presets, which is the concept that wraps up everything), although I wonder if it would make infantry and cavalry speed difference more relevant (particularly if cavalry is made a bit faster, but these are unrelated gameplay discussions). For all I care, batch training could be made more advantageous, and there could be techs improving this even more, to replenish late armies faster, my worry is what happens in the early game (early for newbies! that's not 5 mins, that could be at least 20 mins), particularly on the easier difficulty levels. I never coded in JavaScript, but have done it in many other languages. As I mentioned somewhere else, I don’t like to do PRs, at least for now, because I don’t like to overload what’s already there, and, contrary to what you might think, I don’t want to try to impose my ideas, but to discuss first and see if there’s agreement on if there’s some merit to them.

Thanks for providing evidence to what I think is quite obvious. To add some more, a couple of reviews stating it’s fast-paced: https://blowingupbits.com/2014/02/0-a-d-the-land-between-time/ https://peakd.com/hive-140217/@macchiata/0ad-free-open-source-rts-game--a-gameplay And just to grab one of many posts in this forum, many here mentioning what I think, to the point that “the most competitive players are proposing some pretty extreme things” is stated, and indeed, there one can clearly see what I think is the "state of mind many in the community have" (I never said "all"): https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/130185-training-times-or-why-the-fastest-click-wins/ Here some frustrated players on Reddit, only over the last 3 months (but hey, these people don't exist for the tryharders): https://www.reddit.com/r/0ad/comments/1so1gzp/transition_from_very_easy_easy_is_too_hard/ https://www.reddit.com/r/0ad/comments/1ruix38/example_of_my_very_easy_mode_what/ https://www.reddit.com/r/0ad/comments/1qdf6qz/getting_smashed_fast_in_single_player_demo_a271/ An older post from someone that never had problems with AoE2 (mentioned as a hard game), but for 0 A.D. "just feels like noobs aren't welcomed" (!!!): https://www.reddit.com/r/0ad/comments/1hshm2g/why_is_easy_so_hard/ Indeed I think making things a bit slower would improve the experience for these people and many more, and actually, with this small sample of all the available evidence, I would say one could state that this is a fact. And to repeat myself yet again, this would only happen for a default Normal Preset, the Competitive Preset would leave everything as it is right now, and surely would be the preferred one for MP. Exactly. This is how casuals play. Let alone RTS beginners. This is my main premise.

Seriously do I have to quote myself again?

@guerringuerrin no, I'm basing my ideas on many premises, some are factual, some are opinions, and I think I've been quite clear which is which, but just in case (and going over everything I've said since my long post, you can check): it's a fact that the game states "the default AI level is quite challenging for new players", it's a fact production times are 3 times faster than SC2, I said I think that those wanting to explore the game wouldn't find that enjoyable, I said default options should be friendly for beginners (is this controversial?), it's a fact that the vast majority of players are only interested in SP (quoting AoE devs), I said I think the game a bit slower would be more attractive to most. I didn’t add I think when stating all would make the game more palatable for new players, but by now it should be obvious that’s my opinion, given all that came before. And then I brought up Achievements, which is obviously an idea coming from personal experience from other games, maybe others find them boring, but I would have liked hearing more opinions about that. I then said I think this would be a nice solution. Yet, you take issue with my subsequent statement (using your rephrasing, to which I agree) of “many people might get a bad impression of the game”, stating that that’s “based on personal opinions presented as if they were factual premises”. Well, here I gave you a summary of all what I’ve exactly said up to that point, so, where have I done that? So no, I’m not playing with semantics, that’s just how I’ve been stating things all along. I think I’ve been (luckily, I must say) quite clear on what is a fact, what I think, and what maybe could be, but you dismiss all that and take my last post (or its wording) as the basis of everything. Regarding my last post, first I just asked why not do this or that, based on what I’ve read, and personal experience, which I think is more aligned with SP experience, which is a fact is underrepresented online. Then, I didn’t fill it with “I think” like before not only because it was a fast response to someone, but because I was just rephrasing what I already said before with plenty of I think in front of it. And yes, I’ve read posts where some pushing for a more SP focused experience have been talked down into that they just don't understand the game, something I’ve argued already somewhere else is misleading. But, should I really scour the forum and quote all this? Quote the many times the default difficulty level issue has been brought up (particularly by newbies), quote the many opinions pushing the game towards more MP focus (like the proposal of removal of certain techs), quote the times it has been said this is a fast paced game? We both know these posts are there, and it would be a waste of time for me to do any of that. So, yes, I’d say many think like this, and I’m sure there are those that “hold a completely different view”, but those are not contradictory things, and that's not even the point, the point (or one of many) is that I’m not bringing up anything new (besides Achievements, I don’t think having read about that), I’m just packaging old ideas and combining them with the upgradeable Achievements idea.

The reports should give an idea about the amount of people that will never post in a game's forum. In any case, I'm saying "won't necessarily have", it's not about solid proof, but about why to risk it, and have an artificial warning. Why not just have a normal Normal. I was surprised about how hard it was, not because it's hard in absolute terms (after all I finished SC2 on Brutal), but because it's hard for a normal level, and if on top of this there's a gap between Sandbox and Very Easy, then some adjustments seem recommendable. RTS in general (https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/honest-discussion-why-do-developers-struggle-to-design-good-rts/32757). Regarding your other questions, more like there's even an effort to remove SP features if they have no point in MP, as I've mentioned has happened in the case of certain techs. It's a state of mind many in the community have. It's not realising that production times 3 times faster than SC2, a clearly competitive game, is not the most enjoyable experience for the casual, which are the vast majority of players. I agree. I think of it more the other way though: ideas and content have to be driven by SP experience, balance and final mechanics by MP, in a way that accommodates enough interesting content so as not to make it dull and MP focused only.

I don't doubt most kids nowadays will beat me in 15 minutes, I mentioned them because they were mentioned, the point being that there are lots of other people that won't necessarily have a good first impression if Normal is not normal, a fact stated by the game itself. This is just a relabeling for them, to remove that artificial warning, and to open the door for upgradeable achievements (if that's wanted), none of this changes anything for present players. Yes, and I think the hardest AI difficulty should be indeed harder. But the point is 0 A.D. Normal AI being harder than most Normal/Medium AI in other games.

I wouldn't know what to put exactly where, I can only give historical facts and others can distribute them and their values over those 7 points Regarding the Iron Pillar, “Delhi” should be removed because it was moved there centuries later. Regarding the Aśvamedha ritual, bear in mind that it's ancient, but I didn't find a documented record before the end of the Maurya, it appears more often with Gupta emperors (haven't searched a lot though). As I’ve mentioned somewhere, better if things that existed from before are civ. bonuses, while things developed at the time of the civ. are researchable techs. For techs, maybe some written works, many are just compilations of what existed from before (like the Mahabharata and Ramayana). For some I get wildly different dates, for example, for Hastyayurveda, a veterinary treatise on elephants (that could give them more HP), I’ve found from the 5th century BC to the 11th century AD, which is saying almost nothing. Same for the Sushruta Samhita, an important medicine treatise with focus in surgery, dating from 2000 BC to the sixth century AD (maybe could be a civ. bonus for regeneration). Most advances are perfected from preexisting things, but some techs relevant for the period could be: -Aryabhatiya: mathematical and astronomical treatise by Aryabhata, for tech speed bonus, maybe construction speed bonus if one considers its geometry useful for that. -Khanda: crystallised sugar, starting an important industry, could be a Market bonus. -Chaturanga: first reference of the predecessor of Chess, not sure what to do about it. Something important was wootz (first high quality steel, used for Damascus steel), but comes from South India and from before, although the Gupta mastered its production. On the other hand, something not that important is that the large, sweet varieties of watermelons were developed at this time. Regarding the military, to deal with invading steppe nomads, both archer heavy cavalry and sword heavy cavalry were introduced to become the main component of the army, supported by the more traditional elephants and light infantry. Their bows were recurved, but it’s not known if they were composite.